How do Germany develop their marketing strategy using eWOM technique for Chinese social network?
Abstract: With the advent of the Internet and growing online communities and platforms, eWOM, electronic word of mouth, is getting increasingly important for today's marketing, especially considering that increasing competition and traditional marketing efforts cause information overload, and thus are subject to diminished returns. However, although eWOM is being researched actively today, the differences in eWOM performance/influence in different countries is still poorly understood. For that reason, some western companies could have troubles when they plan their marketing strategy in China. This is also true for German Companies.
This study aims to help people better understand the eWOM situation in China, and to help Germany company develop a more concrete and practical eWOM strategy. To comprehend the eWOM in China, we first compare the Chinese consumers and Germany consumers on their opinions and activities related to eWOM; we then study the actual eWOM performance on both Chinese and Germany typical social networks. We choose Wechat, Sina Weibo and Facebook as our main analyzed target mainly because these three are the most important eWOM platforms for business. In the end, we find that there are certain differences between Chinese and Germany consumers (Section 3), some of them are related to the eWOM performance of Germany companies on the three platforms (Section 4). Thus, we conclude some managerial suggestions for companies who would like to enter the Chinese market (Section 6).
Key Words: eWOM, Marketing Strategy, Sina Weibo, Wechat, Facebook, Social Network, Chinese and Germany Consumers
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